Chapter 2 - Crossing the Line
“Jenna?” Nicholas echoed, his voice pitching up an octave, cracking slightly under the strain of total confusion. He forced a strained, nervous laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping across pavement. “Mr. Stewart, you must be mistaken. My sister... well, she’s tucked away in the back. With the children. She’s... she’s not part of the guest list hierarchy, if you catch my drift. She doesn't really run in these circles.”
Emmett stopped walking. He turned his head slowly, fixing Nicholas with a look so chillingly vacant that my brother physically recoiled.
“Not part of the hierarchy,” Emmett repeated, tasting the words as if they tasted foul. “Is that what you call the person who drafted the restructuring proposal that saved your company from liquidation three months ago?”
A collective gasp sucked the air right out of the room.
Nicholas’s face drained of color, going from a rosy, sun-kissed wedding flush to an ash-gray ghostly pallor. His mouth opened and closed like a fish stranded on a dock. “What? No... wait, that was an anonymous consultant. A top-tier firm out of New York. A genius strategist who charges fifty thousand dollars a brief. That wasn't... that couldn't be...”
“You think a firm did that?” Emmett’s voice dropped an octave, dripping with contempt. “A firm writes in sterile bullet points. That proposal had soul, surgical precision, and a distinct penchant for quoting vintage science fiction in the footnotes. Only one person writes like that.”
Without waiting for another word from my petrified brother, Emmett turned on his heel. He didn't walk toward the VIP table. He didn't shake hands with the investors. He began walking straight down the central aisle, his heavy shoes clicking rhythmically against the marble floor, moving purposefully past the cascading white roses, past the glittering crystal chandeliers, and straight toward the back of the room.
Every eye followed him. Dozens of jaws dropped. My mother stood up halfway from her chair, whispering frantically to my father, “What is he doing? Why is he walking toward the service entrance?”
I sat frozen at Table Nineteen, a purple crayon still clutched in my right hand, having just finished coloring a three-headed dragon for Parker. Parker looked up at me, blinking his big brown eyes. “Is that man mad at you, Miss Jenna?”
“I honestly don't know, buddy,” I whispered back, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
Emmett drew closer. The nanny stepped back instinctively, her eyes wide with awe as the billionaire stopped right beside my plastic chair. The high chair next to me creaked. The crying baby had finally fallen asleep, leaving a heavy, ringing silence over our corner of the ballroom.
May you like
Emmett looked down at me. He looked at my light blue dress. He looked at the crayon in my hand, then down at the green-flamed dragon I had just drawn on a paper placemat.
Then, slowly, a ghost of a smile touched the corner of his stern mouth.
